How To Do Keyword Research For Your Blog / Website And What To Do With Them

If you want to start a blog/website you’ll need to do keyword research to find relevant terms that you want to be found for in the search engines.

When you are a newcomer to the online world and looking to get your blog set up so you can build an online income for yourself; you’ll need to understand what keywords are and how to find them.

First, What Are Keywords?

Before you can understand keyword research you need to understand what keywords are. Keywords are simply words or phrases that people search for on the Internet in search engines like Bing and Google.

Actionable Example:

Go to Google.com and type in “Dog Food” without the quotes.

Notice that search results are displayed based on what you typed in?

So people search for keywords in the search engines and results are then displayed.

What Is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is very simple when you understand the purpose. You want to find words and phrases that are relevant for your industry or niche. The reason (again) is because you want people to be able to find your website in the search engines when they search for a particular set of keywords.

To find these words and phrases (again, keywords) you need to do keyword research. So what are you specifically looking for during keyword research?

Well, you’re looking for what people want.

Example:

If someone types in “dog food” into a search engine we know they are looking for “dog food” but what exactly do they want?

Do they want information about dog food?

Do they want to buy dog food?

Do they want to know what dog food brands exist?

Do they want to know the ingredients of dog food?

That’s where keyword research comes in handy! If we can see what people are searching for we can have a better idea of what they want and then we can give it to them.

We can find phrases which are called “Long Tailed Keywords” that can help us understand more about what people are searching for.

What Is A Long Tailed Keyword?

Simple. It’s a series of 3 or more words that give us a more accurate description of what people want.

Examples Of A Long Tailed Keywords

Where To Buy Dog Food

Dog Food Brands

Buy Dog Food Online

Shop For Organic Dog Food

Notice that the keywords above are much more descriptive than “dog food?” This gives us a more accurate idea of what the potential visitor to your website is looking for.

So How Do You Do Keyword Research?

Luckily there are free tools and paid tools that can help us with this. The first tool I suggest learning how to use is the free Google Keyword Planner. It’s simple to use and will help you figure out how often people are searching for specific online terms.

Please note: Keep in mind all tools provide an ESTIMATE only. None of them are perfect and at times it’s possible for them to be slightly off. But, being close is good enough for now. Later in the keyword research demonstration I’ll show you how to look a bit deeper and figure out how to find things that might be slightly under the radar.

Before you start doing keyword research you need to have a particular niche in mind that you’re interested in. Need help with that? See my choosing a niche tutorial.

Please note: you need to have a free account setup at Google.com before you can use the tool.

You’ll come to a screen that looks like this:

A. Click Search for a keyword and ad group idea

Next, you’ll see a screen that looks like this:

A. Type in the market you’re interested in

B. Ignore for this tutorial

C. Ignore

D. Change language, country if needed

E. Click “get ideas”

If you want to see how to analyze your competition in the search engines you’ll need to use video #2 here.

Now you want to find a primary keyword phrase. A primary keyword phrase is a phrase or topic that you want to build your website around.

Action: Spend as long as you need finding your primary keyword phrase and move on only after you’ve found it.

After you’ve found a primary keyword phrase you now have the main topic your blog is going to focus on.

Whether it’s a small niche style site like “Grooming your dog” or a broader topic like “staying healthy” it’s up to you.

Keep in mind that broader niche markets are harder to break into at first; but are more rewarding over time. But, when you see competition abound it means that there is some serious money in that niche market.

So my personal suggestion if it’s your very first blog, start with a long tailed keyword for your niche market when you are brand new to all of this; then attempt to tackle the larger niche markets when you have your feet wet and are making money in smaller niche markets first.

Keyword Research Part II: Additional Keywords To Grow Your Site

After your blog is setup you need to do more keyword research so that you can start creating blog posts about your particular topic.

There are a few ways to figure out what to write about in your industry. The first thing I suggest you do is to look at what other blogs and websites in your industry are writing about. This can help give you a better idea of what to write about. Before you can create content though, you’ll need topics to write bout.

Actionable Task:

Go visit 5 other blogs/websites in your niche and write down 10 topics they are writing about.

To find other blogs simply search for your primary keywords in a search engine use Bing or Google.

Next, you need to do a bit more keyword research. Now you need take each of those topics that you wrote down and do some more research.

I.e. if one of the topics you wrote down was grilling salmon; you would enter that into the box on the Google Adwords tool.

A. Select “Keyword Ideas”

Below you’ll see a new list of keywords that shows up.

A). Find long tailed keywords (3 or more words together) that are fitting for your niche

B). Check the monthly searches. It doesn’t really matter how many searches the phrase has. Even if the phrase only had 100 searches per month you could still use it. Obviously the more searches the better for getting more traffic to your website. However, typically, the more searches, the harder the competition when trying to rank your site in the search engines.

C). Ignore this for now. This is simply advertiser competition for paid ads, which we will not need.

As you can see just one topic can have several keywords. Grilled salmon showed me 801 results. If you want to dig deeper and find more keywords outside of Google’s keyword tool you’ll need to do some advanced research using a tool.

Because each topic you investigate will show at least 100 results you can turn a few topics into hundreds of posts for your site. The object isn’t to do all this at once! However, for now just pick out a few choice phrases based on each topic.

You should now have a main or primary keyword phrase and at least 10 additional long-tailed keyword phrases in which to build your website around. You can go ahead and save and export or write down all the keywords you’re interested in.

Anytime you need to do keyword research I suggest using the above tutorial and when you’re ready to advance your research a little further check out my advanced research using the Market Samurai keyword tool.

You can go ahead and stop here for now or you can continue on to a little more advanced stuff on keyword research.

Keyword Research Part III: Additional Phrases That Inform & Help You Sell Stuff

Buyer Keywords

Some keywords have a potential to make you more money than others. We call these types of keywords “buyer or buying keyword phrases.”

These phrases show a buying intent from the person searching for them. I suggest having some of these on your website if possible.

Here is a list of potential buyer keywords:

Purchase

Order

Buy

Buying

Review

Ratings

Cheap

Cheapest

Best Price

Deal

Sale

Top 10 (any top 10, 5 etc)

Essentially what people do is they type these phrases into the search engine with the usual intent to buy. i.e. “buy organic dog food online.”

Is there any question what the person searching this online wants to do when they type in that phrase?

Obviously, make sure every page on your website is optimized or the keywords you want that particular page to rank for. If you are unsure how to do this my friend Justin Lewis has a nice write up on that topic here.

What about the terms reviews and ratings though? Why is that a big deal?

People turn to the Internet to look for deals and reviews of products online before they make a purchase. In fact, according to Neilson Net Ratings 70% of all people trust anonymous reviews over radio and T.V. advertising. Pretty shocking isn’t it?

Let’s examine this further.

Let’s say someone wanted to know what the top recommended organic dog food brands are. They might open up their web browser and go to Bing or Google and type “organic dog food reviews.”

Why would they want reviews on organic dog food? In this case it’s typically to find out what the best brands are and make a purchase.

As a website owner this is where you can take advantage of this. You can create pages/posts on your website based around those types of keywords and rank them in the search engines.

The traffic you’ll get from this will be targeted traffic with a buying intent in mind. If the webpage your visitor arrives at has advertisements or your affiliate link included they are more likely to make a purchase through you.

This doesn’t mean that other keywords won’t make you money; because they will. However, we can unequivocally state that when someone types in a buying keyword; we know that most of the time their intent is to purchase something.

Factual Or Informative Keywords

Factual and informative keywords have some very distinct uses. Here are a few of their uses:

Establishes you as an expert in your field

Builds trust with your visitor (trust can lead to sales)

Teaches or informs your visitor (this may lead to a buying decision)

Supports the other pages/posts on your website

Here is a list of factual or informative keywords:

Facts

Information

About

Research on

How it works

How to (easily can lead to sales if you teach and recommend through these keywords)

The above list is just a few. I am sure there are far more possibilities in this keyword area.

This type of keyword is important to use on your website because it will show your visitor that you know what you’re talking about, build trust by establishing you as an expert and ultimately support all the other information on your website.

Having these types of keywords on your website also make it easy to reference your own writing. I.e. in this write-up you’re reading now about keywords you’ll notice I reference several of my other informative posts within.

Let me show you a practical use. Imagine you have a website about “organic dog food.” A visitor comes to your website and is reading a review you’ve created about a particular organic dog food blend. In the review you reference another post that you wrote called “facts about organic dog food ingredients” where you’re supporting why you recommend that someone buys this brand of dog food from your affiliate link.

The post is used to steer people away from harmful ingredients and brands that might hurt their pet. Now, imagine yourself as a potential customer reading that; you’ll likely buy for a number of reasons:

Facts were presented; building trust

You don’t want the other brand that may hurt your dog

After reading the facts it’s convenient to buy

So you can see just having supporting material on your website can help influence buyers even though it’s not a buying keyword.

In conclusion it’s ideal to use both buying keywords and factual/informative keywords on your website for the best results. Keywords are critical for your website to be found in the search engines and without doing it you’ll basically be diving into a topic blindly and hoping for the best.

You can find more training here and also you can join one of my courses here and here. Enjoy and if you have any questions, ask below!

Michael Brown

I'm Michael S. Brown, Internet Marketer, husband and father. I have been successful in business and marketing since 1998. In 2007 I took to the internet marketing world and have never looked back.
I love teaching people the knowledge that I have acquired and the ultimate boost to my ego is to see everyone I teach succeed in business. My goal is to make everyone who comes into contact with me as successful or even more successful than myself.

[…] #1. Find a niche market to get involved in. (Niche means smaller part of a large market). I have an easy tutorial set up for finding a niche here. After you find a niche do some keyword research. […]

[…] give them the green light to start by simply clicking a button. I recommend doing a quick keyword research on the potential keyword using Market Samurai or Keyword Canine or even the Google Adwords tool […]

Hi Michael,
I just had a quick look at the new Google Keyword Planner.
Maybe a silly question, but what do we do about Exact Match – Broad Match – etc.?
I know you always focused on Exact Match.
Thanks,
Grant

Hi Michael,
Just curious. Is there a way to sort your results. In the old keyword tool I used to sort by global monthly searches – giving me an easy high to low count. I like keyword planner but I tried to look at a way of sorting by average monthly search and couldn’t find one. Is there not a way or am I just being a dunce 🙂